Books

[spaffe]

but seriously, it's a pretty good book if you're into that sort of thing. The dude's a researcher that has put a substantial amount of work into the archaeology of alcoholic beverages in Ancient Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Egypt. Easy enough for the casual reader to figure out what's going on, but has that academic backing behind it.

My only complaint is that he doesn't have footnotes or endnotes, and that's unforgivable.

Cool, all though that lolz mostly referred to your comment

 

[MajestikMøøse]

It's not my fault that Dionysus has chosen me to spread his rites

 

[spaffe]

Nice, let me know when you find any bacchantes and I'll come over, capering and playing the flute, just like the guy in the middle

 

[MajestikMøøse]

sweet, we can have an orgy.

 

[spaffe]

But you mean, you don't you arrange those kind things at the classical faculty? :[

 

[MajestikMøøse]

I'm afraid there is a deficiency of men in my faculty, and I get the impression that a large number of women that constitute the majority would find it lewd.

So the symposia just involve drinking, that's all.

 

[junkaccount]

I'd just round up the lot of them and teach them how to make souvlaki with that skewer in your pants pocket

 

[MajestikMøøse]

I'd just round up the lot of them and teach them how to make souvlaki with that skewer in your pants pocket

I'll have try it out sometime.

 

[Necromunchkin]

I am going on a book-buying spree tomorrow. Haven't quite compiled my list, but I've a rough idea of quite a lot I plan to get.

 

[Krilons Resa]

Moose likes to talk to himself.

 

[spaffe]

I'm halfway through Klaus Mann's (the son of Thomas Mann) Flucht in den Norden (Espace to the North -- eg Sweden) and so far it seems really good. It's basically about a communist girl who flees from the nazis to a Swedish friend. There's lot of sexual, even lesbian, tension waiting to erupt during the bright summer nights of the north, which the girl spends at her friends countryside mansion

 

[cthulufhtagn]

let me know if/when it erupts

 

[Susperia]

Reading Lolita In Tehran
By Azar Nafisi


I’ve been reading a lot of books lately---admittedly mainly books on the environment (go read The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and women’s issues. I suppose this book could be filed under women’s issues but it’s a little more than that. It is no Infidel, but it still deserves to be praised and spoken of.

Reading Lolita in Tehran gives you a glimpse of not only daily life for women in the 90’s under Ayatolla Khomeini but also their escape into a kind of freedom through art----literature. While the new regime in Iran is spiraling backwards into Old Medieval ways of life, Nafisi and her students---“my girls” as she calls them, are growing out of their Medieval garb, their headscarfs, their robes and their burkas, into spirited 20th century women.

Nafisi insists that the book “Lolita” is not supposed to be seen as a parallel of the Islamic state and the young girls of Iran… but I don’t really believe her. How can I? There are too many similarities. The young girl, broken, she and her mother both used by a man (Humbert) to make them into what he wants them to be. Punished when she tries to escape, verbally and physically abused when she protests or refuses him. Humbert blames Lolita for her own rape. Lolita, scared and confused, doesn’t leave him… because she has “nowhere else to go”. She stays with Humbert for a long time and takes it and all the while all she wants is to “be a normal girl… To live a normal life”, as one of Nafisi’s students states. And all the while, these Iranian girls are being molded by their country to be figments of men’s imaginations. To play the role the Quoran has so cruelly scripted for them to play. Like Lolita. Soon after the Islamic regime took over in 1979… they lowered the marriage age for girls to nine. Nine. Even younger than Lolita, and yet Lolita is banned for its perversity. It’s all too much of a coincidence. If Nafisi didn’t realize this then, please, she must see it now.

But, then again, Nafisi and all other women who grew up in Iran have been told their whole lives that it’s not about man’s dominance over woman…its about religion. It’s God’s dominance over man…. and woman. God wants you to submit, not man. Man only wants you to so you look good in the eyes of God. In that respect, I see how Nafisi and the girls may not have ever picked up on just how similar they and Lolita were.

The state in which the women of Iran were/are in is probably best summed up in the author's words near the end: "Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe." During their secret meetings to discuss Lolita, a book forbidden in Iran, the girls frequently lament about their personal lives, specifically their run-ins with the “morality guards” who would force them into such humiliating and hilarious situations as checking eyelashes because they look too long, or for “biting their apples too seductively” while walking in the park together.

The girls naturally question and sometimes outright despise their country, their families and their upbringing. And why not? Many have been molested and raped, not only by strangers but also uncles…family friends… Brothers harass and mock their sisters in order to feel more dominant. To tout their manliness, their superiority. Mothers can only stand by and watch. I want to say that I really believe the Islamic regime has come so painfully close to destroying any respect the men and women of Iran (and any other Islamic country) ever had for each other. The men are now all misogynists…the women distrust and have no respect left for the men. One girl asks, “If men have the right to enjoy sex… Don’t we have a right to enjoy sex too? And, if our husbands don’t satisfy us, then don’t we have a right to look somewhere else?” Adultery is never right, but these girls, these women, are already being cheated by their husbands because they humiliate them, look down upon them, give them no love or satisfaction, in or out of the bedroom. These women are practically forced to look for love elsewhere, and are then chastised, beaten, or more likely, imprisoned or killed for it. For wanting love.

This is a good book to read if you have fair to good knowledge of classic literature (or a will to). The few criticisms I have of Reading Lolita in Tehran is that it is sometimes boring, especially if you have not read the books Nafisi lectures about for chapters on end. (She does not only discuss Lolita, but also other books by Nobokov, James and Austen). I also wish she talked more about the Islamic regime, but have to remind myself the book isn’t about that. If you are only interested in reading to gain knowledge of women’s predicaments in Iran or that part of the world in general, I would recommend reading Infidel or Zoya’s Story: An Afghan Woman’s Struggle for Freedom instead. Those books are meant to show us, through the eyes of women, the Islamic Fundamentalists and what they’ve done. And I could write two other entire blogs on them each. Reading Lolita in Tehran I believe is meant to show us that no matter how much you try to take away a person’s freedom---She will escape, even if it’s just mental escape. And the more you take away, the more she will escape. And by escape I mean try to be human again…

And art is good for that. For making one feel human again… That I believe is Nafisi’s point in a nutshell.



Disclaimer: Taken from my myspace page... I did not write that solely for you fine folks. Also, no need for anyone to point out that my writing is informal and amateur----I know that, this isn't a real review, just me writing down some thoughts on the intarwebz.

 

[MajestikMøøse]

So I'm in the middle of reading Foucault's Pendulum. It's pretty freakin' sweet.

 

[swizzlenuts]

Finished another Lovecraft book! This man is fucking brilliant!

I don't know what to start next. Either The Idiot, God: The Failed Hypothesis, or Bad Astronomy.

Fucking decisions....

 

[Krilons Resa]

The Lurker At The Threshhold

 

[swizzlenuts]

The Lurker At The Threshhold

Wot?

Bad Astronomy.

Chose it!

 

[Krilons Resa]

Wot?

Lovecraft

 

[swizzlenuts]

I don't think I've read that one!

 

[swizzlenuts]

Holy Fuck! This Bad Astronomy book absolutely rules!